There Was Only One Upset In The First Round

You heard me.

One upset. Cleveland State blowing out Wake Forest.

That was it.

Here's why.

For starters, a 10 seed beating a 7 seed is equivalent to a 9 seed beating an 8 seed. Simply put, not an upset. So throw Maryland, Michigan, and USC out the window.

We are down to five.

I don't care where you are seeded. 12, 13, 6, 9, whatever. If you are a major conference team, and you win in the first round, it is not an upset. The only exception is when a team with absolutely no business being in any postseason tournament (a la Georgia circa last year) makes a run through their conference to get to the dance.

Arizona has been to the NCAA tournament 25 years in a row. They beat Washington, Kansas, and Gonzaga this season. They have two, maybe three, guys headed to the NBA. If they hadn't lost five of their last six games (four losses to NCAA tournament teams, one to the hottest team out west in the last month of the season), they would not have been anywhere near a 12 seed. They beat a Utah team that won a two-bid conference and lost to D2 Southwest Baptist early in the season.

Who is better?

Wisconsin is forever the underdog. Ever since Bo Ryan took over is 2002, Wisconsin has been consistently the most underrated team in basketball. The Badgers lost six in a row in the middle of the season which is what left them on the bubble, but this is a Wisconsin team that plays a staunch defense and runs a system offensively that maximizes the abilities of their players. They beat a Florida State team that relies 100% on one guy (Toney Douglas) and that was playing in their first NCAA Tournament since 1998.

So is Wisconsin beating the Noles an upset?

Now, we are down to three.

Dayton won 27 games this year, finishing second in a league that put as many teams in the dance as the SEC. They beat Marquette when Marquette was still good (something that West Virginia cannot claim). They rank 27th in the RPI, just 6 spots behind Mountaineers. They won at Xavier.

Is that really an upset?

Two left.

Western Kentucky over Illinois is the tricky one. WKU won the Sun Belt's regular season and conference titles and beat Louisville during the regular season. They are also coming off of a Sweet 16 season last year. Illinois is a team that missed the dance last season, struggled a bit down the stretch, and was playing without their starting point guard. Can you really call the most predictable upset lower-seeded team winning an upset?

No.

So that leaves us with Cleveland State. The Vikings did have a nice win at Syracuse during the season, but they struggled through a 12-6 campaign in the Horizon League. It didn't matter, as Cedric Jackson, Norris Cole, J'Nathan Bullock, and company rolled past the former #1 team in the country Wake Forest.

There was no question who was the best team on the floor last night, and it wasn't the team that finished second in the ACC.

That is an upset.